What was Salty Señorita?
Every neighborhood needs a Mexican place that is neither a temple nor a nightclub, and for twenty years Old Town Scottsdale’s was a patio with sixteen kinds of margarita.
Salty Señorita opened in Old Town around 2003, a tacos-and-tequila room that never tried to be more than that. It spent a decade in its first space before closing in November 2013 to move a few blocks up Scottsdale Road into the former Billet Bar at 3748 N Scottsdale Rd. The second act opened in early December with a fresh build-out, a new executive chef and the thing everyone remembers: a list of sixteen margarita flavors, poured in flights of three so nobody had to commit. Behind the drinks was a kitchen better than it needed to be, pressing its own corn tortillas and filling them with pork carnitas, braised short rib and a spicy ceviche that regulars ordered on autopilot.
The room worked because it filled the hours the neighborhood’s louder operators ignored. Lunch, early dinner, a weekend brunch and a patio you could actually talk on made it the default for locals who wanted Mexican food in Old Town without the El Hefe dance-floor flip at ten. It closed at the beginning of summer 2023, nearly a decade into its second address and roughly twenty years after the first margarita. Three summers later the building still sat empty, concrete crumbling, a broker’s sign promising a rare opportunity. Honest verdict: it was never a great restaurant. It was a very good habit, which in Old Town is rarer.
The flight, the tortillas and the patio
Order the flight, not the glass. Sixteen flavors is a menu, not a gimmick, and the house knew it; the flight of three was the standard first order at any table that had been before. Classic, spicy and something fruit-forward was the safe trio, but the point was to taste across the list and argue about it. Single margaritas were fine and large; the flight was the experience.
Eat the tortillas. The kitchen’s quiet advantage was that it made its own corn tortillas, and the tacos built on them, carnitas, braised short rib, the spicy ceviche, were the best things on the menu. The rest of the card ran the Sonoran-Arizona canon, enchiladas, burritos, bowls and a long appetizer list, competent and generous. Compared to the scratch-taco seriousness of Cien Agaves a few blocks east, it was looser and cheaper.
Sit outside. The patio was the room. Inside leaned toward televisions and the bar; outside, under shade and misters in the hot months, was where the long lunches and the early-evening tables happened. The relocation into the old Billet Bar gave the restaurant a bigger footprint on Scottsdale Road, and the patio was the part of the upgrade that mattered.
Know the clock. Hours ran to midnight on weeknights and one in the morning on weekends, with Saturday and Sunday opening at ten for brunch. Late-morning weekends were the regulars’ window, before the Old Town recovery crowd woke up. Late nights were a last stop for the bar crowd, and the kitchen was on autopilot by then.
Twenty years, two addresses and an empty building
Salty Señorita’s timeline maps the arc of Old Town’s last two decades almost exactly. It opened in the early 2000s, when the neighborhood’s nightlife boom was pulling young crowds down Scottsdale Road and a casual tequila patio could build a following on price and hours alone. Its brand briefly grew, with a North Scottsdale room on Northsight Boulevard and a Mesa location that closed in 2011, before contracting back to the original.
The 2013 move was the pivotal decision. The old space, after ten years, was tired, and the owners chose to relocate rather than renovate, handing it to Union Barrel House, a craft-beer-and-melts concept that opened in January 2014 and did not last. The new room in the former Billet Bar gave Salty Señorita a bigger patio and a Scottsdale Road address, plus a new executive chef and menu that Phoenix New Times covered on opening. For the next nine years it was one of the steadiest things on the strip: not a destination, not a scene, just full.
Then came the 2020s. The pandemic hammered patio restaurants that depended on lunch and weekday regulars, and the recovery brought a different Old Town, one where landlords priced space for bottle-service operators and national brands rather than a locals’ taco patio. Salty Señorita closed at the beginning of summer 2023 without a farewell, and the building stayed dark. By August 2026 a local newspaper found it deteriorating, part of a grim summer that also took Old Town Tortilla Factory after thirty years and Sel on Main Street.
Honest assessment: Salty Señorita was a mid-tier restaurant with a first-rate drinks gimmick and a great patio, and it is remembered fondly because it was reliable rather than remarkable. But the empty building on Scottsdale Road is the more telling monument. When a neighborhood can no longer support a twenty-year-old taco place with sixteen margaritas and reasonable prices, the problem is not the taco place.